Aston Martin is at the beginning of something of a renaissance, which CEO Andy Palmer is calling the ‘Second Century Plan’, and it starts with the new DB11.

The Vantage is next in line to be replaced, and like DB11, it will be a completely new design based on Aston’s brand new bonded aluminium architecture, which replaces the old ‘VH’ underpinnings.

Presume a design that draws a lot of influence from the DB10 Bond car (shown here) that we drove briefly after Spectre’s London premiere, as well as design cues from the hard core Aston Martin Vulcan track car that we first laid eyes on at Goodwood in 2015, as it roared up Lord March’s iconic driveway.

At least that’s we’ve been told to expect of the next Vantage, by Aston Martin design team member Sam Holgate, when he afforded CarAdvice with a rare walk-around of the DB10 at Aston’s Gaydon HQ late last year.

While the DB10 was a made-for-movie model only of just 10 units, the new-generation Vantage will be a series production car, which Aston’s Chief Creative Officer and Design Director, Marek Reichman says is an entirely different design to the current version.

“While I can’t tell you how it drives yet, I can tell you how good it looks. And it’s not just me talking, either. When I take the cover off new Vantage to show dealers and prospective customers, as I’m talking, people just clap. It’s the one car where I literally don’t need to say anything at all."

“DB10 is a beautiful looking car, but we did things [with the new Vantage] that make it even better than DB10; wheelbase, overhangs and such, and it blows DB10 away”.

And despite the fact that new Vantage will be powered by a Mercedes-AMG V8 engine, Reichman says that it will definitely sound like you would expect of a Vantage.

“It might be an AMG V8, but we top and tail to suit the Vantage. So we use our own sump and we put our own manifold system on top and its obviously badged Aston Martin.

“Sure the engine will have a core sound, but we’ll develop the sound of this engine with manifolds, exhaust, catalytic converters and mufflers, which can all be tuned by us to deliver a special note”.

Expect to see the new Aston Martin Vantage emerge in the later part of 2017.